A Quantum Shift? – Where we seem to be now on Life after Death With over 100 years of research into the nature of death and survival of consciousness, a more sophisticated way of looking at the evidence seems to be emerging. Based on a number of interviews and wide reading, Lance Butler outlines a new understanding based on science as well as spiritual experience.
Even Life after Death changes; ...

All Physics is Nonlocal! By Paul Kieniewicz (SMN)
At the recent SMN conference devoted to the work of David Bohm and Ilya Prigogine, Basil Hiley treated us to a thorough, mathematical discussion of nonlocality — one that sent me back to my physics textbook. Nonlocality is a word you hear quite often these days. But what does it mean? Though ...

An electric rose by any other name…. That living processes in plants and animals involve electricity has been known for almost two centuries. Around 1900, the biologist J.C. Bose researched how living tissues generate electricity. He went as far as to propose that the flow of electricity in plant tissues mimicked that of animal nerve cells. Perhaps, as a result, plants could ...

An Image of Global Integrity: The parameters of an enlightened global society – Part 1
There is a growing awareness of the need for a systems shift in humanity’s relationship to the planet, and that our present global trajectory is unsustainable. Tony Hodgson offers an alternative analysis.
Introduction
Despite growing concern over the impact of humanity on the systems of life, and despite accelerating knowledge of the predicament, we appear to remain ...

An Image of Global Integrity: The parameters of an enlightened global society – Part 2
There is a growing awareness of the need for a systems shift in humanity’s relationship to the planet, and that our present global trajectory is unsustainable. Tony Hodgson offers an alternative analysis.
If you missed Part 1 you can read it here.
A Framework for Practical Analysis
There are a number of obstacles to clear analysis of these ...

An Open Eye on Early Education
Grethe highlights a disturbing development in educational policy.
You may not know that in 2007, private as well as state-funded nurseries, were made to apply an educational curriculum including reading, writing, numbers and basic computing, designed by the government (with minimal consultation) and enforced by Ofsted inspection. In 2009, 4 year-olds entered formal education, following the ...

Are PSI phenomena transmitted by Electromagnetic Waves? One of the main objections raised against the existence of paranormal phenomena is the lack of a scientific mechanism to explain how they happen. Several scientists have proposed that the carriers are electromagnetic waves, perhaps ultra-low frequency waves. In a recent review article that examines this question, Craig Weiler recounts a 1977 remote viewing experiment ...

Are there limits to what we can know?
These days, there’s no shortage of scientific optimism, that this or that problem, even though it cannot be solved today will one day be solved. One day we will understand the nature of consciousness and, yes, it will be shown to be material in origin. One day we’ll prove why the universe contains something rather ...

Art and Mysticism – Part 1 Paul introduces the reader to the mystical experience of art – direct perception of beauty, which we can all experience.
I confess from the outset that I am uncomfortable with the word “mysticism.” It is an important word, there is no doubt about it, but it has taken on meanings in addition to the one that ...

Art and Mysticism – Part 2 Paul continues his critique of the mystical experience of art, the direct perception of beauty open to all of us.
The Interior
Now let’s return to State of Life for another level of interpretation. What makes Perrault’s work so captivating is that it symbolises the aspect of reality most important to us all: the ...

Beehives Funded by the Scientific and Medical Network Installed in Kenya
A letter from Dr. Lucy King, speaker at the SMN Mystics and Scientists Conference 2015. In response to her presentation, members collected £2,015 toward beehive fences to protect two Kenyan villages against elephant incursions.
I hope all is well! I just wanted to send you a file of images to show you photos of all the ...

Bell’s Theorem – Is Everything Predetermined? Is quantum entanglement real? When two photons are created at the same time, and then separated over some distance, are they still mysteriously in touch with each other, so that what one photon does affects what the other photon does — instantaneously?
The concept was first quantified by Bell in his 1964 paper, and known as ...

Bioelectricity – Nature’s Book of Instructions One of the today’s unanswered questions in developmental biology, is what causes an organism to grow from an egg and acquire the form that it does. The study of how living forms develop and acquire their final shapes occupied much of Goethe’s life, and inspired his theory of forms. Since the discovery of the DNA ...

Body Issues — Human and Robotic
By Paul Kieniewicz
Back in the 1960’s, the Polish Science Fiction writer, Stanisław Lem wrote a short story about robots. A rocket along with its calculator lands on an uninhabited planet and subsequently spawns a race of robots. The robots (who call themselves Magnificans), build an entire city along with theatre and music ensembles. Along with ...

Can Integrated Information Explain Consciousness? The debate on the nature and origin of consciousness has lately taken an unexpected turn. Rather than restricting consciousness to the human species, the new theories such as Integrated Information Consciousness (IIC) are expanding the notion of consciousness to many material entities, non-biological included. After a long detour into the material and away from anything ...

Can Yoga and Meditation ward off Alzheimer’s disease? We’re all used to hearing that a course in yoga and meditation can make you feel better. Help you cope with stress. Now a new study headed by Helen Lavretsky of UCLA and published in the May edition of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Research indicates yoga and meditation may also forestall the cognitive impairment that ...

Can Yoga and Meditation ward off Alzheimer’s disease? We’re all used to hearing that a course in yoga and meditation can make you feel better. Help you cope with stress. Now a new study headed by Helen Lavretsky of UCLA and published in the May edition of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Research indicates yoga and meditation may also forestall the cognitive impairment that often precedes the development ...

Commission for Extended Science Dear Friends and Colleagues
Under the auspices of the Scientific and Medical Network (www.scimednet.org) and following the publication of a number of manifestos calling for a wider and deeper science, we are proposing to establish a Commission for Extended Science.
You will see the rationale and remit of the Commission at the beginning of the attached document. ...

Conscious Machines – What do they think? By Paul Kieniewicz
So, we may one day all be replaced by intelligent machines. One day, given enough computational power, machines will become self-aware. According to some AI researchers, some machines already have a measure of self-awareness. Of consciousness. And then, there’s the fabled Singularity, when the machine surpasses the human being and becomes a truly ...

Consciousness and Entropy What is the relationship of consciousness to the neurological activity of the brain? Does the brain behave differently when a person is fully conscious, when they are asleep, or when they are undergoing an epileptic seizure? A recent study by R. Guevara Erra, D. M. Mateos, R. Wennberg, J.L. Perez Velazquez of the University of Toronto, suggests that ...

Consciousness in the Brain Even at the stage of the retina, a division arises between the dorsal and the ventral stream. The dorsal stream is responsible for movements in relations to objects, and is unconscious. The ventral stream has specialised modules for different aspects of vision. This processing happens at a still unconscious stage, with consciousness only found at ...

Death and the Human Animal Here Mary Midgley, now in her 90s, reflects on the profound implications of attempting to abolish death. The more one thinks it through, the less desirable the prospect seems. An earlier version of this article appeared in Philosophy Now, March-April 2012
Till lately, people discussing death didn’t have to consider the idea of actually abolishing it. ...

Deconstructing Dawkins – Richard Dawkins and The Fallacies of Mechanistic Science Richard Dawkins is the high priest of popular science, this country’s unofficial scientist laureate. His theories have helped to form the generally accepted scientific ‘rational’ worldview of our culture, which most of our institutions, our media, and our respected intellectuals accept as ‘reality’. The main tenets of this worldview can perhaps be summarised as follows:
• ...

Digital Media and Early Child Development Editorial by Paul Kieniewicz
Anyone visiting their child’s classroom today will be impressed at how the computer, and other digital media have established themselves as teaching / learning tools. A recent New York Times article, How Google Took over the Classroom, relates how much of this advance is driven by a war between Microsoft and Google ...

Dolphins Talk When Performing a Team Task Do dolphins have language skills similar to ours? Do the vocalizations of bottlenose dolphins mean anything? Are the dolphins conveying useful information or just having a good time? While primates such as chimpanzees can be taught sign language, there is a great deal of scepticism as to whether they are using language that has a ...

Dowsing: A Review Dowsers have recently defined dowsing as ‘the art of knowing’. This reflects the fact that it was traditionally known as water divining and was a commercially important means of locating water and minerals, but it is often used today to detect a much wider range of apparently ‘unknowable’ information, from medical diagnosis to the location ...

Epigenetic Tags can be passed on to the Next Generation
Epigenetics — the science of gene expression is a moving target. Over the past thirty years geneticists recognised that the way a gene is expressed can be influenced by environmental factors. A mother’s obesity, diabetes stress or even mental illness can be passed onto her offspring even if the condition is acquired by her diet ...

Essay Review: Tibetan and Western Models of Mind
Any attempt to help neuroscientists and Tibetan Buddhists to understand each other is of potential value. At the very least, such an attempt is likely to help scholars on both sides to enter discussions from informed positions rather than from ignorance. Thus these three books deserve a warm welcome, though readers may vary somewhat in ...

Extending the Range of Science – by Chris Thomson Chris Thomson has worked as an economist, a researcher in Chinese, a lawyer, and in think-tanks in Scotland and the USA. He now lives in the Catalan Pyrenees, and devotes himself to writing, mentoring and trying to make the esoteric exoteric. The following article argues for a new extended approach to science to improve our ...

Finding a New Central Purpose Do you have a purpose, in your life, or in your work, or both? Perhaps this is something you never ask yourself. Or perhaps it changes from day to day as you try to grapple with the challenges that life seems to throw at you. I have found that having a clear purpose is immensely ...

From Particles to People TAM 2012 (James Randi Educational Foundation annual meeting, Las Vegas)
…I was fortunate enough to find myself last week in Geneva, at CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Collider, watching the experimental physicists there announce the discovery of the Higgs Boson – or at least something very much like it. We think it is the ...

From Water Memory to Digital Biology ‘And the demonstration* of all these things is so certain that, though experience apparently contradicts them we will have more faith in our reason than in our senses.’ René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy *(springing from the mind, inspired by God)
The principal mission of DigiBio is to bring a clear and irrefutable answer to the controversy ...

Head Transplant or Body Transplant?
Would you like to donate your head to science along with your other organs? Or have a head transplant because you don’t like the shape of the rest of your body? Is that a head transplant or a body transplant? The question is by no means academic nor whimsical. According to the Daily Mail, Valery ...

Homeopathy: The therapy that dare not speak its name?
According to modern pharmacology, there can be no biochemical basis for homeopathy because substances diluted out of existence should not have any effects, let alone therapeutic ones. So to practice or partake of homeopathy is tantamount to believing that nothing has the power to do something, i.e., homeopathy is magic. Although many homeopaths would no ...

How Private are our Thoughts?
The nature of the human biological field (Biofield) and its relationship to the Earth’s field is a rapidly developing area of neuroscience research. Several recent studies of Michael Persinger and others at Laurentian University indicate that our thoughts may not be all that private after all. That we share our neurological patterns with others close ...

In Accordance With Their Own Nature: Women and Equality in the Catholic Church
By Jo de Groot BSW PhD DipEd
30th March 2017
Introduction
In this paper I present the historical development of the Catholic Church’s position on the acceptance of priesthood for males only. Whatever the reasons given, they are without reasonable foundation. I show that the Church is not keeping up with the generally accepted fact that women are ...

It’s Happening Now The new psycho-spiritual paradigm
The Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists was founded just over 10 years ago by a number of Network Members, and now has over 2,000 members. Interestingly, this makes it the largest SIG within the College. Larry Culliford has been actively involved in this group and outlines in this ...

Jewels Made From Diamonds or Plastic?
Whenever we have been furnished with tar baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be dishonourable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid we should find, upon examination, that the jewels ...

Late Thoughts; After 90 years
Editor’s Note: Member Professor Erland Lagerroth celebrated his 90th birthday this year. As you will see from the autobiography and article below, he has been a prolific and pioneering author in Swedish. He was prominent enough to attract the attention of Swedish skeptics, who awarded him the title of ‘Misleader of the Year’ – a ...

Laudato Si… Respect for our Earth
June 2015. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, “Laudato Si” is likely to go down as one of the most significant documents published in our time. No other is likely to have comparable impact on our society. Most important, it is more than a document. This is church teaching that may reach far into societies that are ...

Less is Better – A Powerful way of Being Intelligent
We sometimes hear the phrase “less is more”, and we probably know what it means. In fact, less is not more. More is more! However, less is often better. This is very significant, because we in live in times when many people believe that “more is better”, a belief that is probably at the root ...

Light is Better than Mosquito Repellent: Honey is Better than Poison
On Monday, 28th June 2015 I attended the 80th birthday celebratory visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama for the opening of the Buddhist centre in Aldershot, this being an area identified as having the largest population of Buddhists in the UK, and having strong links to the Gurkha and Nepalese community. The packed event ...

Living Energy Resonators: Transcending the Gene to a New Story of Light and Life
Science has yet to solve major mysteries concerning life’s spontaneous selfassembly into intricate patterns. While explanations may one day be found by focusing entirely on genes and molecules, an elegant alternative already exists. For living beings have the capacity to behave as energy resonators, trapping spatially patterned light (electromagnetic energy) within them. This patterned energy ...

Living Philosophy and the Joy of Life
The art of living is second to none. The art of understanding is also important: it should help us not only to comprehend the ways we have been bound and imprisoned, but also to find a path to liberation, to freedom, to fulfillment.
We need to start with assumptions about the world in which we are ...

By Paul Kieniewicz Back in 1975 I ran a bookshop called “The Gateway” in Ojai, California: Books for Mind Body…What were Network Members reading in 1975? was last modified: May 21st, 2018 by Paul Kieniewicz

Abstract The standing wave patterns formed on the surface of a vertically oscillated uid enclosed by…Determinants of Faraday Wave-Patterns in Water Samples Oscillated Vertically at a Range of Frequencies from 50-200 Hz Merlin Sheldrake* & Rupert Sheldrake was last modified: April 30th, 2018 by Paul Kieniewicz

By Paul Kieniewicz So, we may one day all be replaced by intelligent machines. One day, given enough computational power,…Conscious Machines – What do they think? was last modified: April 27th, 2018 by Paul Kieniewicz

Do dolphins have language skills similar to ours? Do the vocalizations of bottlenose dolphins mean anything? Are the dolphins conveying…Dolphins Talk When Performing a Team Task was last modified: September 23rd, 2017 by Richard Irwin

We’re used to thinking of our bodies as bio-chemical systems that our cells are maintained by chemical processes. When we…Singing the Body Electric was last modified: October 4th, 2017 by Richard Irwin

We’re all used to hearing that a course in yoga and meditation can make you feel better. Help you cope…Can Yoga and Meditation ward off Alzheimer’s disease? was last modified: September 21st, 2017 by Richard Irwin

Editorial by Paul Kieniewicz Anyone visiting their child’s classroom today will be impressed at how the computer, and other digital…Digital Media and Early Child Development was last modified: April 27th, 2018 by Paul Kieniewicz

One of the main objections raised against the existence of paranormal phenomena is the lack of a scientific mechanism to…Are PSI phenomena transmitted by Electromagnetic Waves? was last modified: April 27th, 2018 by Paul Kieniewicz